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Better than construction work By Ruth Sinai Tags: Arab sector, Israel It's easy to think she is a Jewess. She has a Hebrew-sounding name and her well-groomed appearance and brand-name clothes make her look every bit a Tel Avivian, while her accent sounds like that of a sabra. She is the perfect product of globalization. But nevertheless D.M. is a proud Arab, a Muslim, who for the past six years has worked in a fashion chain in the center of the country. It is not by chance that her appearance hides all signs of her origin. "I am forced to hide it. There are people who are put off and who might even leave the shop if they knew the saleslady was an Arab," she says. "One time I lifted up a cute little boy of one of the customers, a religious woman, and when she heard me answering someone in Arabic, she grabbed the child from me." Most of the customers do not usually realize that the woman who helps them in the mall to choose a pair of jeans, or the salesman for a hose for the garden, or ink for the printer, is an Arab resident of the Triangle, or Wadi Ara, or Ramle, or Lod or Galilee. But the number of Arabs employed in the retail businesses or the services is growing, especially in the large chains and the telephone service depots. Advertisement Once, before the intifadas and the curfews, Jews would travel to Arab towns to do shopping. Today Arabs come in droves to the Jewish communities to sell in response to the needs of both sides - the economic interests of the employers and the socioeconomic interests of the workers. Moshe Rosenblum, CEO of Israel Malls, says the phenomenon stems, among other things, from the shortage of workers. "The chain stores pay minimum wage or a little more than that. A lot of Jews have become choosy, while many of the Arab women prove themselves to be very good sales people," he says. "An Arab salesman is prepared also to clean the toilets and to work for minimum wage without fringe benefits. Jews, less so," says Adib Yihye, the owner of a manpower company from Kafr Kara. From the point of view of many young people in the Arab sector, too, the way to integration into Israeli society goes through the mall which, at least on the surface, appears to be turning into a kind of melting pot. "They stand together at attention [with their Jewish counterparts] when the siren goes off on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and on Memorial Day they eat together, they celebrate birthdays together and they get the same salary," Yihye says. This Jewish-Arab mutual fate also sometimes finds expression in exploitation. Okba Massalha graduated from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 2006 in chemical engineering but did not find work in his field despite numerous interviews. In a chain store for toys, on the other hand, he was accepted as a bicycle salesman in return for a minimum wage and 150% per hour on Saturdays. "I didn't enjoy it. You give your everything, and they act as if they are doing you a favor. It's not connected to my origin. There were a lot of Jewish workers who left like I did," he says. Just as for Massalha, so some of the other Arab workers also are employed in the stores by default. "Whoever finishes high school and speaks good Hebrew and doesn't want to work in construction or in agriculture goes to work in a store," says Dani Ben-Simhon from the Ma'an association, which helps Arabs to find employment. Yaakub Ibrahim, formerly a journalist and currently a student who is also the spokesperson for the Abraham Fund, which promotes coexistence, says he previously worked in McDonalds. "There were about 40 of us, 30 of them Arabs and the remainder Ethiopians and Russians. They pay a minimum wage, and almost no fringe benefits. But the Jews who work there are 16 or 17 while a lot of the Arabs are 35 or 40 because they have far fewer options," he says. "Arab women don't have a lot of options and this is a million percent better work than working in a factory or agriculture. It is also more respectable than working for a lawyer in the Arab sector who pays you NIS 1,000 [per month]. Once upon a time, there was no such option. They wouldn't accept them readily in the chain stores or the centers, says Kiram Baloum, director of the business women's unit in the Jewish -Arab Center for Economic Development. "For many, like D.M., the work is tied up with studies or enables them to save money for studies. But Balhoum also warns about the potential that exists for exploitation. "There is a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of the women, but because it is known that they do not refuse, they are told to work long hours," she says. The demand and supply are also beneficial for the manpower and placement companies, both the authorized ones like that of Yihye and those that jump on the bandwagon. Yihye completed studies in law, worked in marketing and public relations and met directors of corporations. "People came to me who wanted to find work but didn't know how to write a resume or whom to turn to," he says. Three years ago he started with 7,000 people who were seeking employment and today he has 17,000, almost all of them Arabs. Yihye finds matches between workers and telephone centers, service centers, high-tech firms and chain stores. "A man who worked in plastering and carpentry can explain well to a customer at Home Center how to put something together. For a cleaning woman from Kafr Kara who goes to Ga'ash or to Shefayim to work as a cashier and to buy goods there, it is as if she has arrived in New York," he says. "For a 20-year-old girl to take home NIS 5,000 a month, is something." He gets one shekel for every hour that they work. The demands of the employers are minimal: high school education, ability to express themselves in Hebrew and a certificate attesting to their honesty. The Castro chain has additional requirements. "We want workers who enjoy fashion, who like to give service. The workers at Castro are citizens of the country regardless of religion, origin or sex," the company stated. Castro employs some 200 Arabs in its stores, almost 15 percent of its sales staff. There is no data on the scope of employment of Arabs, and most chain stores prefer not to talk about it. "From my point of view, it is not an issue," says Yaakov Honigman, who employs a large number of Arab workers in the chain that bears his name and in TNT, which he also owns. The Fox chain, with its 180 branches, employs Arabs as salespeople and managers of branches. The deputy director general for marketing, Einat Portugali, says she has no statistics since the chain does not attach importance to the origin of its workers. In areas where there is a large concentration of Arab residents, like Karmiel for example, the number of Arab workers is almost half the total. In the chain's stores in the Sharon region also, where many of the customers are from the Arab communities in the Triangle, there is a high percentage of Arab workers, she says. Except for this marketing advantage, Fox has no special reason to prefer Arab workers since its stores are closed on Saturdays. In the past, the big advantage of employing Arab workers was that they could work on Saturdays and holidays. But over time, the employers understood that in order for the salespeople to know the goods well and to be effective over the weekends, it was better for them to work full time. This decision created a certain amount of resentment. "There was anger that we had taken away work slots from Jews," says Yihye of his experience when he was asked to supply workers for a commercial center in Modi'in during the Second Lebanon War. "The population of Modi'in was not used to seeing Arab salesmen and to hear Abed and Mohammed calling each other. There were some who made remarks when the boys spoke Arabic at the cash registers. There were even dismissals. But all in all, the workers understand that they are there to give service. They are not there to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict." A.K. understands why customers are wary when the salespeople speak Arabic. "I also don't feel comfortable when two salesladies speak Russian next to me," she says. She works in a large chain and has advanced to a managerial position, but she has friends in other chains who are not promoted because of their background. "People are racist. Sometimes someone will say to me, 'Do you think I'll put clothes with such an Arab color on my child?' And then I tell them that I'm an Arab, and sometimes they feel bad," she says. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Grass is greener For the cannabis-growing residents of Lebanon, recent fighting has been a blessing. Piggy bank savings Welfare Minister Herzog unveils a plan to open savings accounts for every Israeli child.   1.   I saw... 18:01  |  Inyaki 14/05/08   2.   DM 18:52  |  Connie 14/05/08   3.   Good for her 21:58  |  Lev 14/05/08

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